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Why young people might not heed your warnings

10 September 2013

Campaigns to get young people to stop smoking may find more
success by focusing on the positive benefits, such as having more money and
better skin, rather than emphasising negative outcomes like increased disease
risk, according to UCL research.

The study reveals that young people have greater
difficulty in learning from bad news and using it to interpret their risk of future events. This might explain why they often do not respond to warnings.

We all make decisions based on what we believe may happen in
the future as a consequence of our actions. We change our beliefs and choices based on information we gather from
the world around us.

However, people have a natural tendency to ignore negative
information when making decisions, a trait that may be particularly pertinent to
young people, who tend to engage in more risky and dangerous behaviour.

Researchers at UCL asked
volunteers aged between nine and 26 to estimate how likely they think they are
to personally experience a range of adverse life events, such as being involved
in a car accident or getting lung disease. They then showed the participants
the actual statistics for such events and noted how each adjusted his or her
beliefs after learning that the risk was higher or lower than their own
estimate.

We think we’re invincible when we’re young and any parent will tell you that warnings often go unheeded... (If) you want to get young people to better learn about the risks associated with their choices, you might want to focus on the benefits... rather than hounding them with horror stories.

Dr Tali Sharon, UCL Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences

The results show that younger participants were less likely
to learn from information that shows them that the future is bleaker than
expected. In other words, even when they know the risks they have difficulties
using that information if it’s worse than they thought it would be. In
contrast, the ability to learn from good news remained stable across all ages.

“The findings could help to explain the limited impact of
campaigns targeted at young people to highlight the dangers of careless driving,
unprotected sex, alcohol and drug abuse, and other risky behaviours,” said
lead author, Dr. Christina Moutsiana (UCL Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences).

The authors suggest that reframing
information to highlight beneficial outcomes of desired behaviours, such as the
positive effect of reduced alcohol consumption on sports performance, rather
than the dangers of undesired ones, could have a greater impact.

Dr Tali Sharot, the senior author on the paper and a Wellcome Trust
Research Fellow, said: “We think we’re invincible when we’re young and any
parent will tell you that warnings often go unheeded. Our findings show that if
you want to get young people to better learn about the risks associated with
their choices, you might want to focus on the benefits that a positive change
would bring, rather than hounding them with horror stories."

The findings might partly explain why displaying health
warnings and graphic images of diseased lungs on cigarette packaging has had
little effect at reducing the number of teens taking up smoking.

Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at
the Wellcome Trust, said: “It’s important that we understand how young people
interpret risk to make lifestyle choices that will impact on their future
health if we are to stem the rise in preventable diseases.”

The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal
Society.